


Brothers And Wonders

by MintSauce



Series: The Halfway House [15]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, reference to self harming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 06:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3758428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/pseuds/MintSauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another familiar face, another realisation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers And Wonders

**Author's Note:**

> Just to warn you all, I may be writing loads now, but I'm off from class, so this won't happen often. Still thank you for reading :)
> 
> Any random key smashes please tell me, my dog keeps sitting on my keyboard!

They weren’t anywhere it should have been a factor.

            They were in a small hole in the wall restaurant that was closer to being Northside than South.

            _Rita’s_ did the best burgers that Mickey had ever had the honour of cramming into his mouth. Their fries were pretty good too. The added bonus of course was that just the smell of the place and its food was good enough to get Ian to forfeit his self-imposed torture diet.

            At least once a fortnight they made the effort to come and it was enough that they even had their own regular waitress now. Or at least, they had a waitress that smiled and waved at them to sit wherever, greeting them by name as she scribbled down their usuals.

            It all felt very adult in a stupid sort of way.

            “You do know that these count as dates, right?” Ian asks, feet tangled with Mickey’s beneath the table. He reached across and swiped one of Mickey’s fries, depositing an extra-crispy sweet potato one on Mickey’s plate in its place.

            “Well, shit,” Mickey laughs. “If I’d known you were this cheap, I’d have agreed to them more often.”

            Of course he’d known though. After he’d bucked the fuck up and swallowed his fears, Mickey had known that it would only need to be something as simple as this to qualify as a date with Ian. It was why he insisted they came on the regular. He wasn’t ever going to subject himself to something as stupidly cheesy as a date night, but this was close enough.

            (And it didn’t count as date night because they went on different weekdays, it wasn’t always Thursday. Even though it often was.)

            “Does that make you a cheap date or me then?” Ian asks, that stupid, impossible smile stretching his face wide.

            Mickey frowned, licking at the barbeque sauce at the corner of his mouth. “What’s the difference?”

            “I think it’s negative if it’s you,” Ian explains and then reaches across the table with one of his long gorilla arms. “Here, you missed it.” He swipes at a bit of the sauce still left on Mickey’s cheek, sucking his thumb into his mouth and leaning back, smirking.

             Mickey knows full well what the expression on his face must look like, because he knows what he’s imagining. He wonders whether it would be too crass or not to persuade Ian to duck into the toilets before they leave and give him a quick blowie.

            Ian’s foot starts to slide further up his leg and a shiver goes straight down Mickey’s spine, his cock twitching.

            “Holy shit, _Mickey?_ ”

            And just like that, his boner is dead. Possibly so is he.

            He turns to look at his brother, who’s grinning like a fool as he stands over them. There’s a guy standing just behind him, which _shit_ , makes these odds a little worse. Plus, Mickey really doesn’t want to be banned from _Rita’s_.

            He honestly does think he’s more than a little bit in love with the burgers here.

            “Iggy,” he says and he knows from the way Ian tenses that he recognises the name of his brother.

            Iggy doesn’t look hostile though, he’s grinning wide and stupid as he stares down at Mickey. “Shit man, how long’s it been?” his brother asks. “Ten years or some shit like that, right?”

            Mickey scratches the back of his neck nervously. “Dunno, I was fifteen or some shit like that.”

            So yeah, it had been ten years on the mark. It had also been ten years since Ian had come out to him lying in that shitty little room in the Halfway House. He wondered if Ian had realised.

            “Damn, little brother,” Iggy laughs. “Time flies.” He catches sight of Ian then and sticks out a grubby hand towards him. “Shit, sorry. I’m Iggy man.”

            “Ian,” Ian says. “How’s it going?”

            Iggy shrugs. “Not bad man, girlfriend’s preggo so she’s on my ass to try and find a proper job, but you know how it is.” He smirks then, looks between them. “Or maybe you don’t, I guess.” He looks over his shoulder and motions to the guy behind him. “This is Matt by the way. You mind if we sit?”

            Still waiting for the other shoe to drop, Mickey just shrugs and scoots to the side to let his brother in.

            “You never said your brother was a fairy, man,” Matt says, looking amused as he looks between Ian and Mickey.

            Mickey tenses.

            “Ay, watch your fuckin’ mouth, that’s my little brother you’re talking about,” Iggy says sharply. He nudges Mickey with an elbow. “He’s just being a dick. His sister’s married to a chick, most stable relationship any of us’ll ever see.”

            Matt nods. “True that.”

            And right now, Mickey’s seriously fucking confused. Judging by Ian’s expression though, he’s not the only one.

            “So what’s been keeping you?” Iggy asks. “You look like you’re flying the straight and narrow.”

            “I collect trash,” Mickey says numbly, staring at his brother like he has two heads.

            Iggy pulls a face and laughs. “Shit, still… it pays and gotta smell better than Dad’s old place, right?”

            He isn’t wrong.

            Still, Mickey tenses at the mention of his father. He thinks maybe that might be the catalyst, like maybe the mention of him might spark some realisation in Iggy that he should be beating the shit out of Mickey now.

            Iggy just steals one of Mickey’s fries, eating it in that same noisy way he always did as a kid.

            “What about you?” he asks Ian next, stealing another fry.

            As always, Ian starts to take it all in stride. He even starts to relax. Like this isn’t the weirdest fucking shit to happen to them _ever_.

            “I work in a gym,” he says. “Thinking about becoming a personal trainer, maybe.”

            Mickey’s head snaps up and he stares at Ian. “You didn’t tell me that,” he says, tries to keep the slight sting of hurt out of his voice.

            Ian shrugs and nudges him under the table with his foot. “It’s not a big deal, Mick,” he says. “I’ve only been thinking about it the last few days. Got an offer at work to train someone so it got me wondering.” He shrugs again, takes another bite of his burger.

            “You should go for it,” Mickey says. “Turn your fucking hobby into a job or whatever the fuck they say. You know what I mean.”

            Ian grins, which is a little gross since he’s still eating, but it’s whatever. “You really think I could do it?” he asks.

            Mickey hates how self-conscious he sounds. Hates how somewhere along the line, someone put the idea in his head that he couldn’t achieve every single fucking thing he wanted.

            “Of course,” he says, surprised to find Iggy’s nodding along beside him.

            “Shit man, you sure have the muscles for it,” he says. “How often you work out?”

            The colour starts to rise a little in Ian’s cheeks and he looks down at the table, suddenly finding the shitty pattern really interesting. “Few times a week just.”

            “Bullshit,” Mickey laughs. “Try five times a week, _at least_.”

            Iggy stares. “You a man or a fucking machine, dude?”

            “Worse,” Mickey mutters. “He’s a Gallagher. They’re all fucking crazy.”

            Ian flips him off, but he’s grinning.

            “You Frank’s kid?” Iggy asks suddenly, like he’s had a brain wave. Knowing Iggy, it probably hurt.

            Ian pulls a face. “Unfortunately.”

            Iggy nods seriously. “Our neighbourhood, man. It’s full of fucking daddy issues.”

            Mickey considers his brother curiously, asks, “How’d you know Frank?” He’s never had the displeasure of meeting the man himself. He’s probably hit him if he ever did.

            His brother snorts. “Mickey, Dad’s old place was like one block over from the Gallagher’s,” he says. “Frank and Dad hated each other because he decided to literally _piss_ in Dad’s box of cornflakes during an argument they had once. Something about the constitution.”

            Mickey laughs, it’s impossible not to. “Shit, I remember that.” He looks at Ian. “You’re dad’s a fucking whack-job.”

            Ian just grimaces. “And don’t I know it. You should have tried living with him.”

            “Pass.”

            “Exactly.”

            They all chuckle and it’s quiet while they eat, Iggy continuing to steal their fries. Then Iggy asks, “So how’d you two meet?”

            “The Halfway House,” Mickey feels like there’s no harm in admitting.

            Iggy chokes on his stolen fry. “No fucking way, this that red-headed kid you kept talking about when we had to go back to Dad’s?”

            Mickey scoffs. “No.”

            He doesn’t sound very convincing, he knows this.

            Ian grins like all his Christmases came at once. “Aww, Mick, you talked about me?”

            “I was probably high.”

            “No, he wasn’t,” Iggy chimes in with, shit-eating grin firmly on his face as he and Ian burst out laughing at Mickey’s discomfort.

            “Great, first Mandy, now Iggy,” Mickey mutters, sinking down in his seat. “Congratu-fucking-lations, Gallagher.”

            The look in Ian’s eyes softens, but like a prick, he’s still grinning.

            “You still see Mandy?” Iggy asks and then there they are catching him up on Mandy’s situation like this isn’t still really strange.

            The last time he’d seen Iggy, it had been before the ambulance doors had closed. The ambulance Iggy had called for Mickey. He scratches the faded scars on his arm self-consciously. It’s hard to think sometimes that it had ever gotten to that point, that he had ever gotten so desperate to escape.

            But then, he remembers how Iggy had looked when he’d last seen him. Thin and dirty, with a black eye and an expression so forlorn that a teenager’s facial muscles should not have been able to make.

            In his mind, he’s always thought of his brothers as so much like his Dad. It’s stupid though, because he can’t have been the only one to come out of it with something of a conscious.

            He’s always attributed his escape to Ian and maybe in a lot of ways it was. Still, maybe Iggy is also proof that there was something inside of them still that meant they could do it on their own.

            “We’ve totally been crashing your date, anyway,” Iggy says. “We’ll get out of your hair, but seriously, call me sometime, Mick. You and Ian need to meet my girl and the kid when it gets here.”

            Mickey nods and waves his phone with its programmed in number at him dutifully. “We will,” he promises. He looks down at his demolished plate, not even minding at the severe lack of fries still on it.

            “Good,” Iggy says and his friend Matt nods to them before they start to walk away.

            “Hey, Ig?” Mickey calls after him, unable to stop himself. “Thanks for being okay with this.”

He motions between Ian and himself, their tangled together feet giving him the strength to hold his head up high for maybe the first time in his entire life. He’s not ashamed of this, he doesn’t have to be. He knows that now.

            Iggy just grins, like he knows how much this means, but he isn’t going to be a dickhead and call Mickey out on it. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks and then he’s gone. Just like that. Just as quickly as he arrived.

            It’s weird though, how simple of a response Iggy could give and yet how it meant more than so many other things people have said. Because Iggy had gotten the point completely, he understood what Mickey had taken so long to come to terms with.

            There wasn’t anything wrong with him.

            With that weight taken off of his shoulders, he just looked at Ian and then they just had to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Who am I? Well I'm [themintsauce](http://themintsauce.tumblr.com)!
> 
> On Twitter I am also @BethCottrell and I've started updating what I'm writing there if you're ever interested!


End file.
